Francis Lawrence talks working with Robert Pattinson on Water for Elephants, fans and moreLeave a comment

Your previous film before the hunger games was Water for Elephants, a Reese Witherspoon and Robert Pattinson picture. You worked with him right in the middle of the Twilight mania, and then you went out to do theHunger Games. What lessons did you take from interacting with Robert Pattinson, he dealt with that kind of tabloid fame and fan- that went into working with Jennifer Lawrence in The Hunger Games right afterwards.

When I worked with Rob, he obviously had a huge fan base because of Twilight and there were women and girls, but I say women, camped out at our set every day and at our hotels when we were shooting out of town, and it was odd. He was always very shy about it. I remember having done a movie previously with Will Smith, who is also very popular, and he has a very different way of interacting with his fans, and I was trying to see if I could get Rob a little more comfortable with sort of embracing the fan-dom.

What I learned from him is that actually the two fandoms are very different from one another. His fans are very different from Will Smith’s fans, right, and if Rob’s fans got a hold of him, at least at that time it felt like they would rip him to shreds. They would pull his hair out, they would pull his shirt apart, I mean that guy … there was reason for him to be nervous with some of those fans. Not all but some.